Open Post: The Arms of the Emperor are Never Idle

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon spends her mornings in the practice yard, bright and early, despite the cold. She jogs and stretches to get her blood pumping and her muscles warm before she draws her sword, and then after drills she brings Tally her coffee, and then after that it's back to more sword—unless Tally hauls her off to some other activity, which she pretends to hate but is secretly devastatingly grateful for. The absolute worst part of this place is all the time. Endless stretches of time, with barely any work to be done.

In some ways it's just like the Ninth—except on the Ninth she knew her exits. They were few, sure, and near-impossible, but she knew them: buy her way out, fight her way out, trick her way out, or truly earn it.

None of those apply, here.

She breaks for lunch, and wanders the halls trying to locate various Clues and Mysteries that might end up giving her a way out, and mostly just finds people. More and more people.

She's not antisocial. She likes the people here, more than she's openly liked anyone in her life, individually or as a group. But a gnawing restlessness keeps her on the move rather than letting her time fill up with idle conversation as so many here do. She's always hunting for something to keep her busy, to wear out her body so that when she sleeps her mind is forced to rest rather than serving her a lovely buffet of the worst things she's ever seen and even worse things she hasn't, the things she was yoinked away just in time to miss.

Sometimes it even works.

[This post is open in perpetuity until something happens to make me close it, at which point I will edit it and say so! Feel free to find Gideon in the morning doing sword drills, or tooling around inside, opening and closing drawers and trying peel the wallpaper off in case there's flesh underneath.]

Comments

[sporesprouter]

"Oh. Their ship got attacked by pirates." That isn't at all a complete answer to the question, but it's definitely the first step of the answer.

[ninth_cavalier]

"And the pirates saved you?"

[sporesprouter]

"It's a little more complicated than that, but more or less?"

[ninth_cavalier]

"Did you stay with them, then? Are you some kind of pirate queen?" That'd be hot.

[sporesprouter]

"I did end up staying with them and also ended up becoming the captain of the ship, but they're not pirates anymore. They didn't really want to be in the first place. The captain before me more or less forced them into it."

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon grins. "You scared 'em straight. Or—un-scared 'em straight. A heroic reformer on the high seas."

[sporesprouter]

She laughs. "I guess that's one way to put it, yes."

[ninth_cavalier]

"So what do you sail around doing, back home? If not pirating." She wonders, briefly, if Tress is like Mothwing—rescuing people from unfair bondage. But it's unlikely—that kind of person has to be crazy rare.

[sporesprouter]

"Trading, now that the Sorceress is gone. We're the only ones who can trade through the Crimson and Midnight seas, so it opens up routes that weren't available before to distant places. It's useful."

[ninth_cavalier]

"The Crimson and Midnight seas?"

[sporesprouter]

She nods. "Out of the twelve seas on my world, they're the two most dangerous."

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon stares at her. She's only seen one sea in her life; the waters that surrounded Canaan House, only a year or so ago. Before that, the largest body of water she'd experienced was a well. "There are twelves seas on your planet? How is there any room for land?"

[sporesprouter]

Technically, the largest body of water Tress has ever experienced is the lake at the mansion, but that's slightly beside the point. "Well, the land sticks out of the seas."

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon idly stretches, hands behind her head. "So it's kind of like the sea is space, and the land is different planets. Do the different islands have different cultures and shit?"

[sporesprouter]

She nods. "Different cultures, different languages, everything."

[ninth_cavalier]

"Different languages? I thought everyone couldn't talk to each other on translator day because they were from different dimensions, you're saying different places on the same planet have different languages?"

[sporesprouter]

She nods. "Yes, and that's not even mentioning spoken language and sign language."

[ninth_cavalier]

"Oh, the hand signs Galahad does, sure." Gideon considers. "I guess there are different dialects, in my dimension, and maybe different languages in some of the outer worlds. But everyone in the Nine Houses speaks the same languages. And there's Latin, obviously, but no one speaks Latin."

[sporesprouter]

"It's just a... ceremonial language or something, then?"

[ninth_cavalier]

"Used for hymns, tombs, and creepy old bullshit locked in labs," says Gideon, which is agreement.

[sporesprouter]

"... That's an interesting assortment of places."

[ninth_cavalier]

"Is it?" Gideon gives her a little grin. "Those are like the only three places I know. Not counting big mysterious Mansions, obviously."

[sporesprouter]

She laughs. "Well, at least big mysterious Mansions don't have Latin?"

[ninth_cavalier]

"Small mercies," says Gideon. She looks sideways at Tress. "Hey, um. How are you, like, handling it?"

[sporesprouter]

"Being here?" She shrugs. "About as well as ever."